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by wayn3 3516 days ago
There is an international agreement that regulates how ownership in space works. This Week In Startups had a guest who explains it.

It somewhat amounts to "whoever got there first wins".

1 comments

After reading up on this: http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceresvol4/spacelaw.htm...

It seems that the current US position (who will probably be the first to start large scale mining) is that the resource site itself will never be owned but that labor attaches ownership to the ore. As said on the site, this still doesn't deal with when a singular deposit of an element exists and how access would be shared.

Another interesting point that's raised is that if an asteroid is entirely consumed by mining, does that count as 'appropriation'?

Man the next 100 years are gonna be a reaaaallly interesting time for lawyers..